Pastures and House Lawn

Sebucan Seed Harvest

August 31, 2020 /
This was the feature event of our summer at the farm, and on the other side of all the late nights and flower monitoring is the prized reward; eight fertile fruits and four harvested so far, each with 1500-2000 seeds apiece. When a fruit starts to ripen it grows noticeably bigger within a day, and in this species, raspberry in color. Seeds are ready for harvest when the fruit naturally splits open, or in botanist terms, dehisces, exposing the seed pulp for the enticement of winged or scaly passerby. Based on past fruit harvest, I thought I could easily twist the ripe fruit off of the stem, but after five or six careful turns I unintentionally took the areole tube out with it, scarring the stem. You can see the little white “stem” attached to the detached fruit in one of the bowl photos, along with the areole needle cluster I ripped out with it. After a nervous week-long pause in further ripening and some obvious plant healing, the rest have resumed ripening one after another and nearly every other day.

I changed my harvesting technique to carefully excising a lid off of the ripened fruit using an X-acto knife and then scooped out every last bit of seed and pulp with a small spoon into a bowl. After completely cleaning away the pulp, rinsing and then drying the seeds, I quickly count them by tens into groups of 100 for a final fruit count. I sow as quickly as possible to get the highest germination percentage as Pilosocereus Royenii seeds, in my experience so far, don’t hold their vitality very long in storage unlike some others in the genus.

The excised fruit hull that is left behind ripens quickly to a bright red, giving the cactus a “Christmas-y” appearance, then falls off after a few days. The germination of the first fruit’s seeds is making me very happy after the two weeks since sowing. I’m not sure if green anoles eat cactus fruit but its cousins in the Caribbean definitely do, though this one might have innocently been on the lookout for bugs. It frequently shadows me during harvesting and gives me a look that seems to say “I can’t believe you took the whole thing, again!” The bird netting cage and watchful vigilance keeps larger things away and me in a steady supply of seeds.

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James V. Freeman is an established visual artist (oil painting) with a deep interest in natural history, plants and farming. He has had numerous solo shows, a solo museum show, an upcoming museum show and his work has been featured in many publications to date. He currently has a studio in Williston, Fl at the family farm and homestead, "Cactus Island", and as a farmer, specializes in growing columnar cacti of the Caribbean and Gulf countries as well as the aquatic Madegascar Lace Plant. James and his mom Sharon manage and develop the permaculture homestead.